Christian Doctrine in the Poetry of TS Eliot and W. H. Auden
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Durham E-Theses Christian doctrine in the poetry of T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden: an investigation of the religious ideas of these writers in relation to modern sensibility Horne, B. L. How to cite: Horne, B. L. (1967) Christian doctrine in the poetry of T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden: an investigation of the religious ideas of these writers in relation to modern sensibility, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/10040/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 UNIVERSITY 0 F D P R H A M Christian Oootrine in the poetry of T. S. Bliot and V, H. Auden. An investigation of the religions ideas of these writers in relation to modern sensibility. A thesis submitted by BRIAN LAVRENCB: HORNE for the Degree of HASTER OF LBTTBRS JULY 1967 2. ABSTRACT OF THESIS This thesis investigates the differing vays in which the Christian religion finds expression in the poetry of two moderns avowedly Christian, poets. The disouoaion centres upon the ways in which the two cardinal Christian dootrines - Incarnation and Atonement - are apprehended» and ezeoines the distinctive relation each poet bears to the religious sensibility of the twentieth century. Auden's understanding of the Christian vision of life and his grasp, on the essential connection between the fundamental doctrines prove, on close compara• tive examination, to be fuller and surer than Bliot's. The first two chapters deal with the relation between religious and artistic values * primarily in the nineteenth oenturys the background against which the theological and poetic developments of the present century must be understood. The following three chapters trace in Eliot's poetry his changing attitudes to man*s condition and his destiny. Because of a distinctive preoccupation with metaphysical problems of Time and Reality, the Christian beliefs of the later poetry revolve around the single doctrine of the Incarnation by which Eternal and Temporal, Supernatural and Natural are 3. united* Chapter Six briefly esaminea the plays, in vhioh a largely unsuieoessful attempt is made at conveying the meaning of sin and atonement. By oontraets Auden*s worki even in its early stages, shows a ooneem with the Immediate human esperienee of self-oontradiotion and guilt, oonflict and suffering. Consequently his Christian faith is characterised by an emphasis on the transformation of this condition by the sacrificial act known as the Atonement. Nonetheless, the absolute interdependence of Atonement and Incarnation is clearly expressed, so that Auden's work, though frequently inferior, poetically, to Eliot*8, at times embodies the Christian vision with a fullness that Eliot's never achieved. The concluding chapter outlines current theological trends and the ways in which the two poets reflect the distinctive sensibility of the present century. COEJTBOTS ABSTRACT m TMSSZS A note on 'Qonsibility* CHAPTER I Si^ificant aopeoto of tho 11 thoologicol and literary baoZsgrounii9 of tho ninotoonth OQifttury GSAPTER ZI To Bo Eliot. Tho AmoriCQn 38 Qaohcround GimPTER III T. So Qliot and tho 51 philooophical attitudoo of T. E. SSulmo CliAPTBM M Eliot's Poetry. 68 (1) 1909 ° 1917. £. PoQPO 19S0 C5IAPTBR V Eliot'o Poetry. 102 (a) groGioents of an Ar;on CHAPTER VI Eliot's Footry. 118 (3) Aoh Uodneodav and Cour Quartots CHAPTER VIZ Eliot's Poetic Drama 163 CHAPTER VIZI Introduction to tho wor^ 209 of Uo ^o Audon 5. Page CHAPTER IS Auden's Poetry. 218 (l) Prom Poems 1930 to Another Time OBAPTER Z Auden'a Poetry. 259 (2) New Year Letter and Per the Time Being CaAPTBR XI Auden*8 Poetry. 293 (3) Prom The Age of Anxieti to About the House CHAPTER XII The character of twentieth 3^7 century theology and the relation of Bliot*8 and Auden*s work to this pattern of religious sensibility BIBLIOGRAPHY 389 6. INTRODUCTION A note on 'sensibility* • •• I • , Before the attempt at examining the religious ideas of Eliot and Auden is made, it will be necessary to give a clear indication of what the word 'sensibility* is intended to convey throughout this study. It has become a difficult word to use, not merely because it has largely passed out of common speech, but because of the numerous and diverse associations with which it has become encrusted. Most standard English dictionaries allow for at least four interpretations, but only two will be employed here. These are the literal and obvious meanlngi •power of sensation or perception* and the more literary and subtle« 'emotional coneeiousness*^. No use of * sensibility* which disregarded the literal sense could be accepted as legitimate, but it is the second defini• tion that, with slight modifications, will receive the stronger emphasis. Clodification is required because the phirase 'emotional consciousness' suggests primarily the (l) Tfao Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 22 (l933) 7. state of a single individual human being. Throughout this study the word's application will be extended to cover the feielings and perceptions of a whole collection of individuals - as in the expression 'modern sensibility'^. That such a thing as a 'modem' sensibility, particularly in religious matters, actually exists has yet to be established, the concern at the moment is with grammatical legitimacy. This can hardly be denied as long as similar analogical extensions ('belief, 'feeling', 'outlook* - all words with an initially personal and individual frame of reference) can be allowed. Consequently 'sensibility* will be used to denote not merely the power or ability to feel and perceive, but already-constituted structures of feeling and perception. It will have two closely-connected levels of meaning and will operate in much the same way as the word 'conscience* operates. In the case of 'conscience' the commonly- accepted modem definition as 'the faculty or principle which pronounces upon the moral quality of ones motives • • 2 or actions' barely hints at an ambivalence which is taken (1) This is not an idiosyncratic use. T.S. Eliot makes use of a similar 'extension* in his essay Culture Forces in the Human Order. See Prospect for Christendom edited by Haurioe B. Reckitt. (2) A New English Dictionary. Vol. VIII (l91^) 8. for granted, tloral theologians discern two elements in every activity which involves conscience. There is, first, the possession of a whole system of beliefs and principles without which no moral Judgment can be made, (SYlRDERESlis) and, secondly, the power to make decisions by applying general principles in particular cases (CONSCIBNTIA)o Similarly 'sensibility' can be seen to consist of both the structures of thought and feeling and the ability to think and feel and perceive. The constant interaction between the two levels is taken for granted. Perhaps the implications will become clearer by example than by definition. Ifhen, in a somewhat ungraramatical footnote to his essay Religion and the Muses. David Jones writes that A painting by someone of the English Pre-Raphaelites has not the same 'look' as a painting by those Italians before Raphael which the Pre-Raphaelites sought to emulate1 he is remarking on a change in cultural 'sensibility*. No amount of technical imitation on the part of Rosetti or Uolman Hunt could produce the same effect as paintings by Ohirlandaio or Perugiho because the artists could not escape the ways of thinking and feeling peculiar to their own ages. Whatever the Victorian may have believed about the Kiddle Ages, the fact remains that fifteenth century (l). Epoch and Artist, p. lOk n< 9. Italy was a far cry from nineteenth century England, and the religion of the Victorian world was utterly different, and, in some respects, opposed to that of pre-Roformation Europe0 In this particular case, it is in the expression of a specifically religious sensibility that the pre- Raphaelites differ radically from the late Hedieval painters whose style they so much admired. Ttte most celebrated use of the word 'sensibility* in the twentieth century is probably to be found in T.S. Eliot's phrase .'dissociation of sensibility*^. It might be argued that Eliot is referring to the simple 'power of perception', but an earlier phrase in the same essay makes-it dear that he is not. a thou^t to Donne was an experience g it modified hie sensibility^. The Modification' of the Sensibility is analogous to the 'education* of the conscience in which the existing body of beliefs is altered. Eliot is thus referring not merely to Donne's capacity to feel and thinks to an organ or faoultyp but also to his 'outlook's the structure of his thoughts and feelings, ^en he wishes to denote the former he uses the phrase 'mechanism of sensibility'*'. (1) 'The Metaphysical Poets'. Seioeted Bssava. p. 288i (2) Ibid., p. 287« (3) Ibid,, p. 2870 10. £2odern religious sensibility is then to be under• stood as a phrase which refers to the peculiar structures of thought and feeling which govern the religious attitudes, of men primarily in the twentieth century.